The book outlines the contribution of passivity to the constitution of phenomena as diverse as temporal syntheses, perceptual associations, memory fulfillment and cross-cultural communication.

Marr’s celebrated contribution to cognitive science (Marr 1982, chap. 1) was the introduction of (at least) three levels of description/explanation. However, most contemporary research has relegated the distinction between levels to a rather dispensable remark. Ignoring such an important contribution comes at a price, or so we shall argue. In the present paper, first we review Marr’s main points and motivations regarding levels of explanation. Second, we examine two cases in which the distinction between levels has been neglected when considering (...) the structure of mental representations: Cummins et al.’s distinction between structural representation and encodings (Cummins in Journal of Philosophy, 93(12):591–614, 1996; Cummins et al. in Journal of Philosophical Research, 30:405–408, 2001) and Fodor’s account of iconic representation (Fodor 2008). These two cases illustrate the kind of problems in which researchers can find themselves if they overlook distinctions between levels and how easily these problems can be solved when levels are carefully examined. The analysis of these cases allows us to conclude that researchers in the cognitive sciences are well advised to avoid risks of confusion by respecting Marr’s old lesson. (shrink)

There is an unresolved conflict concerning the normative nature of desire. Some authors take rational desire to differ from rational belief in being a normatively unconstrained attitude. Others insist that rational desire seems plausibly subject to several consistency norms. This article argues that the correct analysis of this conflict of conative normativity leads us to acknowledge intrinsic and extrinsic reasons to desire. If sound, this point helps us to unveil a fundamental aspect of desire, namely, that we cannot desire at (...) will. Unlike belief, however, desire can unproblematically accommodate a notion of instrumental attitude. (shrink)

Sometimes Strauss argues as if he thought it possible to understand man without raising questions about his relations to other things, and hence about his place in the whole. But when they are viewed in their broader context, such arguments are seen not to be his final word. Man's humanity cannot be understood in its own terms alone. The human soul differs from everything else in that it is "... open to the whole and therefore more akin to the whole (...) than anything else is." In ordinary usage, "whole" implies completeness and autonomy. But the openness of the soul--i.e., of a part--to the whole can only mean that the whole is open to itself. The whole is, then, not, in the ordinary sense of the term, whole. Nor is the soul which is "open" to it. Stripped of myths, "... the human soul is... more akin to the whole than anything else is" because neither of them is whole. The same conclusion follows when one tries to understand the definition of the philosopher as the man animated by quest for knowledge of the whole. Qua philosopher he knows neither that there is a whole, nor what it might be if there were one. To define the philosopher as the man who knows that he does not know only paraphrases the difficulty. It does not solve it. For "know" is here used equivocally. The same equivocation is at play in the comment "... one cannot know that one does not know without knowing what one does not know". Admittedly "knowledge of ignorance is not ignorance." The philosopher believes and perhaps divines more than he actually knows. All men do. The essential difference between the philosopher and other men may well consist in the fact that the philosopher distinguishes more conscientiously than do others between what he knows and what he believes, and that he strives more single-mindedly than do they to transform as large a share of his beliefs as possible into knowledge. He may conceivably at some point be said to have reached the stage where his aspirations have become reasoned expectations. But that is as far as he can possibly go as long as he remains a philosopher and has not become a wise man or a god. Until and unless the philosopher knows, in the strong sense of the term, he can no more decide whether his aspirations could be fulfilled than he can swim before getting wet. (shrink)

Commensal and pathogenic organisms employ camouflage and mimicry to mediate mutualistic interactions and predator escape. However, the immune mechanisms accounting for the establishment and maintenance of symbiotic bacterial populations are poorly understood. A promising hypothesis suggests that molecular mimicry, a condition in which different organisms share common antigens, is a mechanism of establishing tolerance between commensals and their hosts. On this view, certain bacteria may mimic the structural features of some of their host’s T-cell receptors (TCRs), namely those that survive (...) thymic selection due to their lack of complementarity to self-antigens. With such “holoimmunity” the mimicking micro-organisms avoid immune recognition as the copied TCRs become mirror images of an extended super-organismal self, consisting of symbiotic and host antigens. Accordingly, analysis of genomic and metagenomic data suggests a tripartite mimicry between TCRs, self-antigens, and commensal antigens that would serve as the basis for immune tolerance between these populations. And conversely, in an autoimmune scenario, both symbiotic microbes and the mimicked host tissue would be targeted for immune destruction. (shrink)

KANT HELD THAT NEWTON AND ROUSSEAU HAD REVEALED the ways of Providence: “After Newton and Rousseau, God is justified, and Pope’s thesis is henceforth true.”.

This article attempts to re-establish the importance of Foucault's work for an understanding of the way in which modern law operates. This argument has two stages. Firstly, there is a critique of the interpretation of Foucault's work by legal and sociological thinkers. It is argued that by reading the term ‘juridical’ as synonymous with the term ‘law’ in Foucault, people miss the substance of Foucault's argument. The term juridical describes an arrangement and a representation of power rather than the law. (...) This is made clear through a critique of J. S. Mill's On Liberty which is shown to make a juridical distinction between power and a free space of action which is unsustainable. Secondly, Foucault's genealogy of power relations is recast from the perspective of a legal theoretician. Foucault's history of power relations is constructed from historical differences in the mode of operation of power and discourse. By analysing these differences and their relationship to the mode of operation of law, an account of the place of modern law in Foucault's genealogy is established. Modern law operates between Foucault's concepts of government and discipline. It provides a key way in which government decisions can adjust the relationships between disciplinary institutions. This introduces the idea that law begins to operate in the perspective of the complete lives of individuals rather than just to prevent certain actions. Law, then, operates in accordance with what Foucault calls ‘bio-power’. (shrink)

THIS PAPER IS A DISCUSSION OF MACKIE’S HUMEAN ARGUMENT THAT MIRACLES CANNOT PLAY A ROLE IN A CASE FOR THEISM. I ARGUE THAT MACKIE IS MISTAKEN IN CONTENDING THAT MIRACLES CANNOT FORM PART OF A CASE FOR THEISM. IF THERE IS EVIDENCE THAT CERTAIN EVENTS DEVIATE FROM THE ORDINARY COURSE OF NATURE, AND IF AFFIRMING THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WOULD RENDER THAT EVIDENCE MORE COMPREHENSIBLE THAN OTHERWISE, THEN IT MUST BE ADMITTED THAT EVIDENCE THAT THESE EVENTS HAVE OCCURRED IS EVIDENCE (...) THAT GOD EXISTS. (shrink)

Two theories of excuses are currently popular in criminal law theory: the character theory and the capacity theory. In the former the defendant claims that although he performed a wrongful action, it did not properly reflect his character. In the latter, the defendant claims that although he performed a wrongful action he lacked the capacity to do otherwise. In John Gardner's view neither claim is adequate to provide the defendant with an excuse. Excuses, Gardner thinks, are only appropriate where the (...) defendant can claim that he has lived up to the standards reasonably to be expected of a person performing the role that the defendant was performing. The view defended here is that whilst the Gardner style excuse is an excuse, both of the claims that he rejects properly ground excuses in the criminal law as well. Furthermore, they do not exhaust the field of excuses. Excuses are best seen as defences that mop up where an application of the other rules of the criminal law would not adequately serve its principles. No further ordering of excuses is possible. (shrink)

This article offers a reassessment of the relationship among nationalism, globalization and glocalization. Conventionally, globalization is viewed as a historically recent challenge to the nation. It is argued that globalization, in contrast, is a long-term historical process. The emergence and perseverance of the nation is linked to outcomes of global processes, such as the experience of globality. Two conceptual links among the nation-form, historical globalization and cultural glocalization, are presented to demonstrate the salience of this perspective. First, globalization’s dialectic of (...) homogeneity and heterogeneity influences the nation in a two-fold manner: whereas cultural and institutional isomorphism causes the homogenization of national symbols and institutions, cultural glocalization preserves the specificity of individual national identities. Second, transnational nationalism has played an important role in shaping the nation through the construction of various categories of ‘aliens’ and the subsequent pressure put onto cultural groups to adjust their identities vis-à-vis the nation-state. (shrink)

Este texto se propone abordar la cuestión del lenguaje en Descartes. Lo hace integrándolo a la problemática ontoepistemológica de las Meditationes, revelando una profunda relación entre el esclarecimiento de los usos lingüísticos y la actividad filosófica. De otra parte, tiene el interés de reconstruir un ocasional proyecto cartesiano de "gramática" (1629) en función de las teorías de Descartes sobre los procesos mentales expuestas en las Regulae... y las Notae in programmil Quoddam. En esta última parte, se pretende aproximar la "lingüística (...) cartesiana" al interés contemporáneo por la historia de la teoría del lenguaje. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the uses of Dewey’s ideas in Mexico before his appropriation by the Mexican revolutionary government in 1923. During the early 20th century, anarchists, socialists, and teacher advocates of progressive education in Mexico invoked the name of John Dewey as an important pillar for a vision of a modern Mexico. Deweyan ideas circulated among these radical pedagogues, sprouting in urban centers such as Mérida in Yucatán province, or in poor barrios of México City, where pockets of urban (...) radicalism emerged concurrently without the necessity of concerted action. Subsequently, self-professed disciples of Dewey founded the journal Educación identifying Dewey as a member of the journal’s board of .. (shrink)

Lehar (rightly) insists on the volumetric character of our experience of space. He claims that three-dimensional space stems from the functional three-dimensional topology of the brain. But his “Gestalt Bubble” model of volumetric space bears an intrinsically static structure – a kind of theater, or “diorama,” bound to the visual modality. We call attention to the ambivalence of Gestalt legacy and question the status and precise import of Lehar's model and the phenomenology that motivates it.

Les conditions de possession permettant l’individuation des concepts, bien que peu étudiées, constituent l’un des lieux fondamentaux de la polémique opposant les points de vue frégéen et anti-individualiste. Dans cet article, je décris une théorie compatibiliste de la valeur cognitive qui réunit des conditions de possession anti-individualistes et individualistes. Je soutiens que cette approche générale de la compatibilité des explications frégéenne et anti-individualiste de la possession de concepts suffit à mettre en doute l’idée voulant que la déférence et la transparence (...) sont des caractéristiques fondamentales de la valeur cognitive. (shrink)

In his recent work exploring the role of science in democratic societies Kitcher claims that scientists ought to have a prominent role in setting the agenda for and limits to research. Against the backdrop of the claim that the proper limits of scientific inquiry is John Stuart Mill’s Harm Principle , he identifies the limits of inquiry as the point where the outcomes of research could cause harm to already vulnerable populations. Nonetheless, Kitcher argues against explicit limitations on unscrupulous research (...) on the grounds that restrictions would exacerbate underlying social problems. I show that Kitcher’s argument in favor of dissuading inquiry through conventional standards is problematic and falls prey to the same critique he offers in opposition to official bans. I expand the conversation of limiting scientific research by recognizing that the actions that count as ‘science’ are located in the space between ‘thinking’ and ‘doing’. In this space, we often attempt to balance freedom of research, as scientific speech, against the disparate impact citizens might experience in light of such research. I end by exploring if such disparate impact justifies limiting research, within the context of the United States, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or under international human rights standards more generally. (shrink)